The Art of Translation

It made its author a rich man, and rightly so.

Pope himself, as we have seen, had an ambivalent attitude towards Homer, a mixture of reverence and condescension

Eliot points out in his essay What Is A Classic,

namely, that there is an inherent conflict between literary quality and fidelity.

found this to be more a hindrance than a help.

Pope’s poetic facility – “prettiness” –

“A very pretty poem, Mr Pope, but is it Homer?”

Not all great intellectuals have subscribed to this doctrine.

A balance must be struck between litearay merit in the target language, and fidelity to the host language.

Some sort of compromise is inevitable.